Here's my take on PyCon this year...
== Sprints
This year's sprints were an unqualified success.
=== Successes
We had three non-OSAF folks work on two parcels (one only stayed for one day), and got them working. There were two groups sprinting on parcels. Alec Flett, Jeffrey Harris, and Bill ??? worked on a Flickr parcel. Mark Hertel, Kragen Sitaker (1 day only), Katie Parlante, and I worked on the del.icio.us parcel. The parcels worked well enough that we were able to show them during our presentation in the conference proper. This was a big bonus -- we'd been trying to write the paper to try to convince people that we had enough built so that people could build parcels. When the sprint parcels got done, it was easier to show proof than to tell.
Brian Kirsch spent a ton of time with the Twisted folks (as noted in his post to dev@). The Twisted folks have given Brian and Bear commit privileges to Twisted, which I consider a milestone in our relationship with them.
=== Difficulties
We discovered that there are a number of sharp edges that will cut people trying to develop parcels. Many of these are related to the use of XML to describe Kinds, and to the fact that people have to update the same data in multiple places.
We had to disable the WakeupCallers that got written for the sprint parcels because of some bugs.
Sprint page: <http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/PyCon2005>
Feedback page: <http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Journal/ PyCon2005SprintFeedback>
One day during the sprints Jeffrey and I were trying to explain what Chandler was to two folks who had never heard of Chandler. After they took a look at the website/wiki, they said "I still have no idea what you guys are doing". Fixing this is important.
== PyCon proper
=== Presentations
* Chandler - Our presentation was moderately well attended. We were in the largest room, which I recall being somewhat less than half full. We had a few technical glitches at the beginning, but after that things went pretty smoothly. We ran out of time to take questions, which is how you want a presentation to end. The Chandler Open Space (BOF) lasted for about an hour later that day, and had sizable attendance - around 15-20 people. People had lots of questions, and it seemed like there were some people who were interested in downloading 0.5 and trying to build some parcels.
* PyLucene - I missed Andi's presentation, but I heard PyLucene mentioned a few times during the conference. It seems that
=== Conversations
Here are some relevant blog posts:
<http://www.postneo.com/2005/03/24/pycon-dc-2005-day-2>
<http://yergler.net/blog/archives/2005/03/25/pycon-wrap-up>Brian has already related Divmod's interest in using Chandler instead of building their own rich client.
The organizers of EuroPython tracked me down and asked me to come to EuroPython and give a presentation on Chandler.
Abe Fetting, the author of Yarn is enthusiastic about us using Yarn in Chandler.
== Action Items/Implications
I think that it was definitely good to have a larger presence this year. It is clear that PyCon is the conference to come to in order to get work done and integrate better into the Python community, and a larger presence means more opportunities. The talks are also much more relevant to developers working in Python.
PyCon was the first time we were able to show anything that was remotely like what we intend to build. Chandler 0.5 shows enough of the big ideas (ItemCollections that hold multiple kinds, Items in multiple item collections, stamping, and parcels), that some people were able to get an idea of what we are trying to build. Not everyone saw that, but the people who did were excited by that. This was an important first. I think it was also important to be able to demonstrate running code (both our own, and the sprint parcels).
=== Projects that warrant further investigation:
The MDA projects mentioned by Phillip, in particular Traits and Envisage (I exchanged cards with the Envisage speaker)
PyICU
Yarn
py.test
PythonEggs - http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/PythonEggs - This should be easy.
==== Developer platform improvements:
Based on Sprint feedback, here are some short term and long term things that we need to do in order to improve the situation for parcel developers:
Short term
* Document the various repository types that are available
* Document the kinds that exist in the system and give guidelines on how to derive from them.
* Document the various kinds of blocks that exist so that someone can make a detail view without hand holding.
* Document the use of the web-server based repository viewer as a debugging tool
* Fix any bugs uncovered by the sprint parcels
* Decide whether we want to include the sprint parcels and how
==== Longer term
* Remove parcel.xml and replace with a system that uses Python classes as a much as possible (ideas from Spike should help here)
* Flatten the module hierarchy for parcels (at least)
* Simplify the XML format used to describe blocks/the detail view.
* Improve the error messages and diagnostics issued by the system
* We need support for preference panel type functionality
* Figure out how to change/update the website/wiki
=== Other Actions
* Decide whether to accept the invitation to EuroPython
---- Ted Leung Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) PGP Fingerprint: 1003 7870 251F FA71 A59A CEE3 BEBA 2B87 F5FC 4B42
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